Dumb Money (now on Netflix) will likely be the final audio-visual missive on the great Gamestop stock saga of 2020-21, considering there’s already been two docuseries and a feature documentary covering the topic. This is the fictionalized version starring a bevy of familiar faces (Paul Dano, Pete Davidson, Shailene Woodley and Seth Rogen, just for starters) and directed by mid-prestige filmmaker Craig Gillespie (I Tonya, Lars and the Real Girl) – which makes it primed and ready to entertain us, right? Let’s find out.
DUMB MONEY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Miami, Jan., 2021. Gabe Plotkin (Rogen) is angry because the paperwork isn’t done for the gigantic house he bought – to raze to the ground and build a tennis court neighboring the seaside manse he lives in. Cutel, the movie types out little subtitles as it introduces its characters, revealing their net worth; Gabe’s is $400 million, and before you openly voice your desire to see him chewed alive by herpes-infected fire ants fired at him from a Civil War-era cannon, keep in mind, his fellow hedge-fund a-holes, played by Vincent D’Onofrio and Nick Offerman, are worth multiple billions, so you better come up with an even more horrible and disgusting fate to wish upon those particular guys. Then again, maybe we shouldn’t light the cannon wick yet, since Gabe is about to lose his ass several times over, but not until we jump back six months to the hoary heart of the covid pandemic, and meet Keith Gill (Dano), an average guy living in a rented house with his wife (Woodley) and toddler. He’s about to put a little more than half of his measly $97k net worth into GameStop stocks, and broadcast that fact to whatever dweebs pay attention to him on his YouTube and Reddit channels, where he’s known as Roaring Kitty.
Why GameStop? “I like the stock” is Roaring Kitty’s mantra, and he believes the business is going to hold up just fine despite pandemic woes. He also suspects that giganto hedge funds are about to “short” the company. Now, if you haven’t seen the many other movies that have explained Wall Street lingo that likely goes in one ear of the average viewer and out the other ear of the average viewer, “shorting” is when you – not you, but rather, a-holes – bet that a company is going to go kablooey, then cash in when the stock price plummets. This time, instead of Margo Robbie in a bubble bath explaining this, we have America Ferrara Playing A Nurse, and between this movie and Barbie, 2023 seems to have been the year when America Ferrara Explained It All. Her name is Jenny ($53k), and she’s a fan of Keith’s YouTube babble, so she takes his advice and buys GameStop stock, because, you know, he likes the stock.
Parallel stories occur elsewhere: One, with college students Riri (Myha’la Herrold) and Harmony (Talia Ryder) – each boast a net worth north of negative-$150k, or should that be south? – who put a few bucks on GameStop. And another follows an actual GameStop store clerk, Marcos (Anthony Ramos), who’s worth $1.36, so what the hey, might as well invest it, right? This is about when Keith’s goofball video streams, which feature him in his half-finished basement eating chicken tenders dipped in beer while wearing a ninja headband and cute-ugly cat T-shirts, really start to go viral. More and more of his followers invest, and the stock value climbs and climbs, and suddenly the nurse and the college students and the GameStop counterboy boast net worths worth way more than they used to be worth. Keith could have tens of millions if he cashed out.
But! Here’s the catch: Keith and all his online followers are all too aware that, if they sell their shares, bloated sacks of protoplasm like Gabe will be let off the hook. Keith encourages everyone to “hold the line” and gouge those greedy bastards, an act defined as a “short squeeze.” Keith’s brother Kevin (Davidson) gives off major loser-for-life vibes, but has a valid point when he calls Keith an idiot for not becoming an instant millionaire. Jenny holds the line, putting off dumping the mortgage and getting braces for the kids. The college kids hold the line, because, you know, F— THE MAN. The clerk holds the line, because, well, he might be a gambling addict if he had any money to gamble with. And Gabe ends up holding his dick in front of everyone, including the D’Onofrio and Offerman characters, and the douchenozzles (Sebastian Stan, Rushi Kota) who own Robinhood, a web tool that allows normal folks to buy and sell stocks for free, even though it kinda isn’t, since they’re billionaires somehow? Anyway, these smug rich guys represent how Wall Street has long been broken for everyone except the rich-who-get-richer, so hooray for the average folks who are using the collective power to tear it down.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Big Short was about pretty much the same idea, except it was set during the 2008 market crash, so the short was, you know, way bigger. Otherwise, you’ve got the film Gamestop: Rise of the Players and series Eat the Rich: The GameStop Saga and Gamestopped to A/B with Dumb Money so you can see where fact and fiction part ways.
Performance Worth Watching: I’ve long shrugged at Davidson, whose slacker personae in Big Time Adolescence and The King of Staten Island struck me as one-note. But he’s finally playing variations on that note, in ’22’s Bodies Bodies Bodies, and now in Dumb Money, where he’s a catalyst for the film’s most potent comedy, playing a slob who jabs and counters with a mild-mannered Dano, much to our amusement.
Memorable Dialogue: Brotherly bickering:
Kevin: This asshole thinks he’s Jimmy Buffett now.
Keith: Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett.
Kevin: You’re not either of the Buffetts.
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Dumb Money nicely streamlines the real-life GameStop stock epic down to a 105-minute spot-the-star comedy, which doesn’t reach true ensemble status because most of the primary players never really interact with each other (and that’s why the movie’s success hinges somewhat on Dano’s face-to-face interactions with Davidson and Woodley). That’s true to the nature of life during the pandemic, and the nature of the internet, which brings people together digitally, united as one under the leadership of a fringe weirdo. We all know that isn’t always a good thing for the health of society, but in this case, the fringe weirdo was an unassuming man of strong moral principles, and the internet/social media was the great unifier of the proletariat that it was originally envisioned to be.
However, beyond that little rah-rah notion, Dumb Money isn’t much greater than the sum of its parts. But hey, at least those parts are inspired, whether it’s Ferrara once again playing a relatable everywoman, or Ramos playing a nothing-to-lose guy who finally gets a taste of winning, or Rogen as a silver-spooner who’s chugged from the teat of privilege his entire life and is now choking on sour milk. Gillespie keeps the tone light and the pace relatively quick, and underscores his depictions of the lives of rich and poor and middle class with comedy – note how the well-moneyed never seem to work very much and exist in vibrant natural light, while the rest of the characters coagulate under yellowish bulbs in cramped kitchens.
No one will mistake the film for a masterpiece, or a revelatory cross-section of the class divide; it’s a modest endeavor that reiterates a modern David-v-Goliath story for easy consumption. It’s never so light it blows away, or so heavy that it feels like a burden, which is the danger when dealing with convoluted subject matter like the workings of Wall Street. Gillespie keeps the tone steady, nurtures rock-solid performances and never makes us do too much math, so to speak, and has once again proved that he’s very good at directing mediumweight dramedies stocked with lovable eccentrics.
Our Call: Dumb Money is indeed ready to entertain us. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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